It turns out the story that the Red Cross wants to prosecute people who play violent video games as war criminals is only kind of true, not completely true.

The International Committee of the Red Cross and Red Crescent (ICRC) does take seriously its responsibility to monitor conditions in war zones, educate warring sides on the rules of war and international laws of humanity, including the Geneva Convention on how to treat prisoners of war and the potential for globally witnessed trial and prosecution by the War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague.

It also gets into related issues, trying to bring its moral weight to bear on things it believes could lead to less respect for or wider violation of the international laws of war.

Members of the committee said the Movement (note the capital M) is concerned about humanitarian law and how it should apply to video games, but is primarily concerned about how violent video games affect individuals and whether the International Red Cross/Red Crescent should pressure video-game makers to tone things down.

Now spokespeople for the Red Cross are up in arms about the report, saying the media took the discussion out of the context – imagining some kind of ridiculous campaign against video violence rather than of a discussion about whether the existence of video war games is offensive enough to get the Red Cross to pressure game developers to stop making them.

The group does want to "work" with video-game developers to teach them about international humanitarian law, however, because some of the same companies that make war games for consumers also make them as training aids for the armies of various countries, including the United States.